Dutch ballerina Marianne Hilarides (born 1933) photographed in the studio on the 28th of September, 1967.
Born in Java, modern-day Indonesia (under Dutch rule at the time), she had a successful career in ballet companies across Europe.
Hilarides died of dementia in 2015.
Dancers of the ballet company of the Théâtre du Capitole de Toulouse in France, onstage on the 11th of September, 1973.
I randomly came across this movie when it was on free to air TV a couple of weeks ago, and it was amazing. Based on the life of a real person – and I actually looked up the real woman and was happy to see how historically accurate the movie is – Florence Foster Jenkins tells the story of a Gilded Age New York socialite who, near the end of her life, decides she has what it takes to become a famous opera singer.
The problem? She can’t sing to save herself. She becomes infamous rather than famous.
This is one of the funniest movies I’ve ever seen. You laugh and laugh … and then suddenly you’re crying because it really is a tragic story.
Meryl Streep actually trained as an opera singer (something I just learnt), and – much like the character of Carlotta in The Phantom of the Opera – in order to sing badly, you first have to learn to sing properly.
The real woman really was an appalling singer, and because she paid to have records of her voice made, you can listen to her even now. She’s even worse than in the movie.
The costumes in this movie are worth your time alone.
Streep was ROBBED of the Oscar for this performance (it went to La La Land that year), and both Hugh Grant and Simon Helberg (who is most famous as a sitcom actor, but who is actually a trained concert pianist) were nominated for Golden Globes for their parts. They’re both brilliant, too.
I’m so glad I stumbled across this.
The newly established New Amsterdam Ballet in rehearsal under the direction of Mascha ter Weeme. 24th September 1959.
Two years later the company would merge with Nederlands Ballet to form today’s Dutch National Ballet, directed by Sonia Gaskell until 1969.
Here’s a picture of “baby ballerina” Suzanne Farrell of New York City Ballet, mid-pirouette while on tour in Amsterdam fifty-four years ago. 25th August 1965.
Farrell’s autobiography is Holding On to the Air.
Dancers of the ballet company of the Théâtre du Capitole de Toulouse in France, onstage on the 20th of March, 1968.
The comic opera The Mikado, created by Englishmen Gilbert & Sullivan, premiered at the Savoy Theatre in London on the 14th of March, 1885.
This painting depicts the show being performed in the Ruhleben internment camp west of Berlin in Germany in 1916. British prisoners, interned during the First World War, staged the show from memory.
The painting is by Anglo-Dutch artist Nico Jungmann, who was interned at Ruhleben because he was a naturalised British citizen.
US President Richard Nixon’s historic visit to China in 1972 resulted in significant changes in relations between the two countries.
During the visit, Nixon and his wife attended a performance of the communist ballet Red Detachment of Women. The ballet, based on a 1961 film of the same name, which itself was based on a book, was staged on the 22nd of February, 1972.
Red Detachment of Women, one of only a few ballets permitted in China during the Cultural Revolution, is still in the repertoire of the National Ballet of China.
14th November 1926: A ceremony is held in Warsaw, Poland to unveil the monument to composer Frédéric Chopin. Chopin was born near the Polish capital in 1810, dying in Paris in 1849.
English ballerina Margot Fonteyn, one of the only dancers in history to hold the title of Prima Ballerina Assoluta, is seen here in a photograph dated the 11th of October, 1949.
Fonteyn was dancing the opening night performance at New York’s Metropolitan Opera House.
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